Looking on from Afar
by AgentAva
Summary: Rue gazed down and watched the memories of the last twelve years of her life lapped against her toes like a wave upon the shore. Slowly, the colors swirled into something recognizable. The young girl, as she stood at the edge between nothingness and the torn fabric of life, watched her own life in snippets, not unlike how the Capitol viewed the Games. ((Abandoned))
1. Chapter 1

Title: Looking on from Afar

FULL Summary: Rue gazed down and watched the memories of the last twelve years of her life lapped against her toes like a wave upon the shore. Slowly, the colors swirled into something recognizable. The young girl, as she stood at the edge between nothingness and the torn fabric of life, watched her own life in snippets, not unlike how the Capitol viewed the Games. It was up to her, in the end, to decide whether or not to let go and move on, or hold tight to what once was hers, and try for a second chance.

Rating: T for the Hunger Games, and for a little leg room just in case anything "T-rated" that might occur during Rue's past.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Hunger Games or any of the original characters.

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Dawn was rising over her District as the newborn took in the first breath of her life. It was nearing the end of springtime, where the earth was starting to grow warm in anticipation of summer, but life the grass had yet to turn from green to yellow. In the lamplight, the new parents smiled at each other through sweat and an unspoken feeling of triumph. The woman's dark eyes glowed as her sister, her midwife, turned to display a swaddled baby girl with a wide, curious gaze and a tuft of hair already frizzing from the heat.

"She's perfectly healthy," Medina's melodic voice assured the couple, and handed her over to the waiting arms of her sister, Valeny. "Not even a hair out of place."

The man reached out a callused thumb to stroke his baby girl's soft skin. Her tiny mouth widened in a yawn and it made the father feel his heart jump in his chest. This was his first child, his second love from the moment he set eye on her. She was Rigel's, for now and forever. His baby had not screamed when she had come into the world; her eyes had been already open, taking into the new surroundings. She hadn't even been screaming, and he immediately thought that there was something wrong.

But there had been nothing wrong, Rigel thought as he stroked his first child's cheek. Nothing at all.

"So? What are you going to name her?" Medina broke through the content silence.

The couple exchanged a glance, and Valeny nodded. His voice husky with emotion, her husband replied with a shine in his eyes, "Rue."

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A/N: Thanks for reading! This is a multi-chapter story, and will progress throughout Rue's life before, during, and after the Games and her death, and will explore mostly the relationship she has with her family, her father in particular, and an undisclosed character coming up in later chapters ((HINT)).

And if you have any suggestions for memories of Rue's past, please leave a review telling me, and I could put it into the actual story :)


	2. Chapter 2

"Look at her go," Rigel murmured as he watched his little girl scurry up the Community tree, using her quick steps and light frame to swiftly climb between the branches. The sun had long gone down, and, like her father does during the harvesting seasons, Rue was clambering through the limbs and pretending to gather food.

"I see you, daddy!" She called down at him, making him smile, and bringing him back to the present. Despite the dark, her keen eyesight doesn't fail the five-year-old, and she can tell it is her father's outline down below. Starting from the top of the tree, Rue started to climb back down in a hurry, to get to her father as fast as she can. Halfway through, she lost her grip on the branch and let out an echoing scream as she fell those twenty-some feet to the earth.

And Rigel is there to catch her before she hits the ground and hold her close, as he will always be there to catch his baby for years to come.

"I got you," he hummed as Rue breaks into terrified tears and buries her face in his chest. As she inhaled, her father's smell of hard work and dirt and something else she didn't have a name for calmed the girl down.

Her father pulled Rue to his left hip, stooped to pick up his pack, and slung it over his shoulder. "Come on, baby," he murmured. "Your mom's almost done putting dinner on the table."

Rigel closed the door to his shack behind him as a mockingjay in the distance mimics the notes of Rue's scream.

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**A/N: Thanks for reading! Tell me what you think, I'd love to hear anything and everything from you :)**


	3. Chapter 3

She was about to let her eyes close fully and drift off when Aunt Medina opened the door to the shack, covered in sweat and her dress smeared with some dark substance. Rue was too tired to jump up in excitement; instead, she looked at her aunt with wide, anticipating eyes.

Medina just beamed. "Do you want to come meet your baby sister?"

As she rubbed her eyes, Rue rose to her feet, and felt Medina's warm hands pressed against her back, leading her into the one-room shack with a plot of 50 by 50 feet; Rue remembered that she had walked the entire perimeter earlier in the night, while her mother suffered through her contractions on the opposite side of the room.

Her mother was sitting in the bed, a small package wrapped in her arms. Valeny and Rigel looked up as Rue shyly entered the room. Medina stopped at the door frame, but Rue kept padding slowly towards the newest addition to her small family. She climbed up on the bed, and crawled on all fours until she sat on her mother's knees. The young girl peers down into her baby sister's face.

"She looks so…pink." Rue's face turned down in confusion. She gazed up into Rigel's face. "Are they supposed to look like that?"

Rigel let out a hearty laugh, and lifted his head back to do so. "Oh, baby, you looked like that, too, when you were born."

The new older sister's cheeks burned with embarrassment. "Can I name her?"

"Maybe the next one, Rue," Valeny says in a soft voice, and she reached out to stroke her eldest daughter's cheek. "But her name is Terra, and Terra it will stay."

Rue looked down into the newborn's face, and her blinking brown eyes. She smiled down, and something stirred in the five-year-old's chest, under her ragged brown blouse and skin thickening every day from climbing trees. "Hello, Terra," she whispered to the baby.

Terra gazed in wonder back at her.

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**A/N: Thanks for reading!**


	4. Chapter 4

Rue could barely sleep. The bright light of the moon reached for her through the cracks of her home in the Community, shining a prickling feeling over her eyes and forcing them to open and take in the darkness around her. She was sleeping on the floor with Terra, her little sister, but it wasn't the dirt she minded; Rue knows that her parents deserve to sleep on the bed just over her head; they barely got any time to just be with each other.

But the seven-year-old had no reason to worry about her parent's marriage—she had more prominent things to wonder about. Tomorrow she would join her father as a Harvester for the first time, and the young girl couldn't wait.

The girl knew that she was gifted; her parents told her that the first thing she'd ever said sounded like an angel had sung her father's name, and that she could shimmy up a tree long before she could walk. And when she would sit in the Community tree for hours on end, the mockingjays would crowd around her in the nearby branches, and she would serenade them with her mother's lullabies, and they would sing them back to her.

"Rue?" a child's voice whispered. Snapping out of her dream, the older sister put a finger to her lips as Terra blinks the sleep out of her eyes.

"I'm sorry, did I wake you?" she whispered, and stroked the hair out of Terra's eyes. Terra shook her head, no.

"Sing." She said back. Glancing around to make sure she wouldn't wake anyone, the older girl hummed into Terra's pink ears until her eyes drooped back down. Rue had managed to do the same, and as she drifted back into the precious realm of sleep, she thought she heard a single mockingjay singing back to her Terra's lullaby.

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**A/N: Thanks for reading!**


	5. Chapter 5

From Rue's perch in "Pecan Nut Tree #7" she was assigned to that morning, she could see the numerous Peacekeepers in their pristine white outfits laugh at the old man's pain. The fruit of his labor, apples, toppled from his basket and into the dust as the nearest Peacekeeper forced his boot into his back. The man pressed a weapon into the man's throat, and hissed, "Get up, old man." He released his prisoner from under his boot, and for a moment everyone in the yard stopped and watched him flail around in the dirt, trying to collect his apples and get back onto his feet.

"I said get _up_ old man!" the Peacekeeper yelled, his voice striking cold fear into Rue's heart. He pulled back a leg and swung it into the man's side. And again in his chest. Another one of the guards let one of his boots make its way into the man's face. The sound of a broken nose and spurting blood earns a sharp, petrified gasp from Rue.

Yet another Peacekeeper came forward, not wanting to miss out on the violence. As he reared back his foot, Rue found herself crying out in a shrill voice, "STOP!"

And they did. The three large, strongly built men looked up from their prey, their limbs cocked and ready, stopped by a mere girl's plea, and went in search for the one who had dared to defy them. Her heartbeat was so solid, it shook the branch Rue was trying to hide on. Above her, a mockingjay sung out her cry, in the exact same pitch and length. Soon, the entire yard was swarmed with the sound of Rue's urgent demand.

"Come down here," came another command, this time from the first Peacekeeper. Rue, shaking in terror and yet frozen where she crouched, couldn't move her limbs enough to respond to the order, even if she had wanted to. "_Now_!"

She let out a squeak, and practically tripped over herself trying to scramble down to earth. When the frail girl did, she felt as if surrounded by three white giants, with scowls that could singe her clothes if she was not careful. The pouch full of pecans at her hip felt thick against her thigh.

"Look at this tiny thing," The youngest, fiercest Peacekeeper smirks. He gripped her chin tightly, and when she tried to wriggle away his hand tightened around her. She looked up viciously into his hard blue eyes. That certain shade of blue would forever be branded in Rue's mind as the representation of endless misery. He chuckled at her attempt at defiance, and asks his companions, "Looks like we've got a strong one on our hands, boys. It's a good thing we know how to break strong ones, don't we?" The other Peacekeepers nodded.

Fear buried itself in Rue's eyes. She didn't want to know how they broke strong ones, but she knew that it couldn't be anything good. So the young girl did the best thing she could do—she opened her mouth and chomped down on the man's fingers curled around her face.

He yelped in surprise, and as a quick reflex hit the girl as hard as he can, sending her spiraling to the ground. He knelt to her level, and forced her eyes to meet his. "You're going to regret that, young one." He snarled.

"Let her go!" A voice thundered through the yard, and rips the Peacekeeper away from Rue, making the sunlight flood into her face. She blinked and steadied herself against her Pecan Tree #7, and watches as her father reeled back and punched the youngest Peacekeeper so hard his helmet came flying off.

And she continued to watch as Rigel was beaten to the ground by the other two men. The third man, Rue's assaulter, was massaging his chin, and feeling at the fresh cut underneath his eye. He smiled cruelly at her father. "Well, looky what we've got here," he drawled. "Yet another man _dying_ to be sent to the whip."

"Nobody touches my daughter," Rigel panted, his chin held high.

The Peacekeeper smirked. "We'll see." He nodded at the two other men. "Take him away."

"Daddy!" Rue screamed after him, but her view of her father is cut off by the man who sent him to the whip. He smiled down at the girl.

"He'll be fine, Rue Killian," he drew out her name. "I know who you are, my dear. The first child of Rigel and Valeny Killian; it's your first day on the job, isn't it?" When she did nothing, he slapped her again and ground out, "You _will _answer me."

"Yes."

"Good girl." The baritone words oozed from his mouth. He stood, and started to walk away, taking the air of hostility and bravado with him as he went. "My name is Vyand Vanru, my dear," he called over her shoulder. "You will do your best not to forget it."

And she knew, as she watched him walk away, that she never would, for as long she lived. She would never forget Vyand Vanru.

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**A/N: This chapter is a little longer than the others, but it is important! Rue's childhood enemy (it sounds funny when it's put that way, aha) has been introduced!**


	6. Chapter 6

Her father hissed as Valeny applied a steaming rag to his wounds. The markings of the whip across his back were glowing red in Rue's eyes, and she couldn't help but feel guilty. She had been the one who had caused them, after all. The beating had been hours ago, and yet Rigel's back was still bleeding.

Rue sat in the corner, away from all light and especially, her father. It was her fault he would bear the scars for the rest of his life; it was all her fault. Rigel, in his pain, rolled his neck slowly in a circle, but stopped when he saw a little shadow near the wall. "Rue?"

She gasped, and tried to hole herself deeper in the dark. Her father smiled sadly. "Come here, baby," and outstretched his arms.

Reluctantly, guiltily, Rue peeled herself from the stained wall of the hut and made her way into her father's lap, and buried her face in his chest. "I—I'm so sorry, Daddy," she whimpered. "I didn't think—I didn't mean for—"

As Rigel sighed, he took his daughter's tear-streaked face in his massive hands. "I know." He planted a kiss on her forehead, and drew her in close, despite the pain. At the sink, with soapy cold water sloshing over her tired hands, Velany stopped to listen to her child and husband, but she doesn't smile. She could feel something course through her blood.

There was more misery and violence to come. She could feel it.


End file.
